My Name Is Mr Sir
by LeMoNsOuR
Summary: This is incredibly stupid... I don't even know why I'm writing this. But since I'm dead anyway, you might as well know I haven't always been this... monster. My name is Mr. Sir. -Judge me if you dare.-
1. On A Christmas

**For all of those readers who love Holes, but are tired of reading about the Harlequin Girls of D-Tent. This is just for you.  
I thought maybe it's time there was a story where looks didn't matter, and that sometimes, there isn't just pure good and evil.  
Sometimes...  
Just sometimes...  
Evil is misjudged.  
And good is misinterpreted.**

**-LeMoNsOuR-**

_Prepare to change your point of view..._

It happened on a Christmas.

I was innocently looking through the aisles of the general store for some cheap, false designer handbag for my beloved mother's Christmas present. I hated this store, but it was the only one in the area that sold 'everything'.

I hated it because the only man at the counter was Mr. Whiskers.

Why would an adult man have such low respect for himself? What happened to the dignity of name changing? It's like... it's like a woman who's name is... Mrs. Miss...

MRS. MISS!

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

:I

Or like a man named Mr. Sir...

But you already know that story.

This one starts with me, Marion Sevillo.

As I curiously peered through all the fake handbags and wallets in the Sales aisle, I noticed that Mr. Whiskers was again staring at me with those eyes so covered in flabby wrinkles that you could never tell where he was looking.

But I knew he was looking at me.

On this special day, Mr. Whiskers had brought in his ginormous chocolate Santa for everyone to behold. You see, Mr. Whiskers makes chocolate figurines on the side (though I'm not really sure if they are edible). Chocolate Santa glared at me with even fiercer eyes than Mr. Whiskers had.

I think the reason why he hates me so now, was because when I was three years old, he caught me munching on his prized cat figurine, dedicated to his deceased friend, Mr. Woof.

Mr. Woof was his cat.

We had been sworn enemies since that day, and sometimes I believe he was responsible for my traumatic upbringing.

_Get out of here... get out of here fast before he turns me into a chocolate boy... and MOLEST ME!_

The fearful thought made me jump a little, as I picked up a random, (but tasteful), two-dollar Giorgio Armani handbag and rushed to the counter.

Yup, that's when my life took a turn that turned me into the dreadful Dogface that I am today.

It was as though Mr. Whiskers had planned this day with God since the beginning of time... or ever since I had digested his dedication to sweet ole' Mr. Woof.

As I hurried to the counter to pay for my mother's wonderful gift, what seemed to be a lizard crept from one of the shelves and ran in front of me.

I HATE LIZARDS!

What was even worse was that it was the ugliest, spotted lizard in the world. I didn't even know you could find those in Texas! Well, I lost my bearings and slipped on my own shoes.

A crack of a smile appeared on Mr. Whisker's flabby, wrinkled face, and then his mouth opened to reveal a set of eroded teeth. Husky, suffocating sounds came from his dry throat, as he hacked and coughed and sputtered.

He was laughing at me.

Not much of a laugh, but it was a fucking laugh just the same!

I got up on my feet, glared at him, and glared at chocolate Santa, who was laughing, too.

"Bastards! I'll show you!' I screamed, and kicked a hole in chocolate Santa's groin.

Mr. Whiskers' laugh turned into a groan of old-man horror as he reached out two, gnarled hands towards his beloved Santa.

"Nooooo!"

I just stood there, giggling like a retarded kid seeing a funny circus show.

Suddenly Mr. Whiskers' innocent, old man face turned into a spawn of demonic evil. He stared at me for the longest time, and then brought out a bat from behind him.

Oh my God, he's going to bludgeon me to death!

I stood, frozen.

But then, Mr. Whiskers surprised me by walking towards one of his glass display cases, and he smashed it like hell with the bat. Glass shards flew everywhere as Mr. Whiskers laughed demonically.

Calmly, with me still frozen in place, he walked over to his phone, and dialed a familiar tone,

"Hello, police. Some hooligan just walked into my store and smashed one of my display cases! And—" Mr. Whiskers shed a dirty, cloudy tear that looked more like semen, "—and he killed my precious chocolate Santa!"

For an old, withered man, he was smart as H-E-double hockey sticks.

It was that moment I turned my heels and ran for my dear little life, leaving Armani on the counter for another day. Then this old man, with his arthritis and sick old man's breath, jumped upon me like some wild animal and tackled me down.

"You ain't goin' no place, sonny!"

"Get off me, freak!" I screamed as loudly as my twelve-year old voice could scream.

I tried kicking him off, but he kept pushing me back down.

Then I did what no one would ever do to the poor elderly. I poked him in the eye.

"Oww!' Mr. Whiskers cried as he covered his face with his pale, withered hands and backed away.

I snickered sinisterly, but immediately stopped to see two policemen at the door. They only saw me poking the 'poor old man' in the eye. They didn't see the savage old prune tackle me down like a proffessional football player on steroids and smash his own display case.

Then they saw Mr. Whiskers' beloved Chocolate Santa, who was brutally castrated by an twelve-year-old kid with pink overalls (from my mother).

And then they saw the smashed display case.

I was arrested and brought to the judge.

There's no need to explain the whole ordeal. I'm sure every one of you have already read the 'judge' part of the story millions of times.

"In all my years as judge, I've never seen such acts of violence upon the elderly... form an twelve-year-old child! You deserve harsher punishment, but unfortunately you are a minor..." the judge peered down at me over his glasses.

"Twenty-two months at Camp Greenlake, son."

Within two days, I found myself in a very disgusting, rickety old car (this was _before_ we were "rich" enough to own a bus).

The man driving it had wispy, white hair. The woman beside him sat dully, staring out the window. Her head bobbled as the car bounced along the pebbly road. She looked so... dead. I've never seen such a defeated, ugly expression in all my life. Little orange strings stuck out from different places in her white hair. I believed she must have been a redhead once.

I could barely see outside of the window, it was so darn dusty. It was then that I had realized we were literally nowhere. It was all sand and cracked ground for miles and miles.

"Excuse me," the stringy-haired woman slowly turned to glare at me with her dead, decomposed expression.

"I don't want to kiss ass or anything, but I don't mean to be rude..." I twiddled my thumbs.

"I just—"

"—Well, spit it out, boy!' the man driving growled.

"Where the _hell _are we going, old man?" I demanded.

The old man laughed, and the woman just smiled. It was as if I'd said the silliest thing in the world.

"You guessed right when you said Hell."

Jesus, I'm getting sick of old people.


	2. Lou Walker and the Old People

2

"Welcome to yer next home for twenty two months, boy!" the old man exclaimed as he got out of the dirty old-people's car and took a long breath of 'fresh' air. He coughed and sputtered and turned to me.

"Well... get outta there, boy. I ain't gonna open the door for you." He laughed and then pushed his large nose against the window and said,

"This ain't no Girl Scout camp."

He chuckled, spat and walked around the side of the car to open the door for his wife. She got out like a sleep walker and stood next to her husband like pale ornament. The dead expression on her face hadn't changed since I had first seen her and I had wondered if she was ever happy...

Whoa... that kind of surprised me... I was actually thinking _compassionately_ about someone _else_!

I opened the door energetically and slammed it.

That's when a saw her.

It was like beholding the most frightening thing any eyes of a young boy should never see at his age. She was a vision in brown... or maybe pink that had turned brown after rolling in the mud somewhere. Her poofy red hair was tied into two uneven pigtails and some hairs managed to escape the two different colored scrungies, making her look like she'd got up from a nice, soothing nap in a gravehole in the back yard.

Thinking about it now, she had the uncanny appearance of Darla from that stupid _Nemo _movie you damn kids watch.

She smiled at me—or at least I _think _she did, which showed that two of her front teeth were missing.

She walked towards me like a possessed doll with the old man (and woman?) watching her with pride.

"HI!" she said in a loud, friendly voice.

I was too frightened to move and just stared at her in horror, still trying to figure out what this thing in front of me was. Could I touch it? What if it bites me? WHAT IF IT HAS RABIES! OH _GOD_, HELP ME!

"This perdy lil' missy here's my granddaughter, Lou Walker. She's about the same age as ye but obviously far more _mature_.."

A mature drool escaped from her mouth.

"...And she'll be digging holes with the rest of ye." He looked down at the happy, redheaded creature staring back at him with blank eyes, "... and though she's ma darlin' princess, she could get the same treatment as _erryone_ else." He ruffled her already-ruffled hair. "We don't want to spoil her.. turn her into a mean, awful tyrant lady when she grows up."

"I good girl!" she exclaimed, adding a cute little jump to her excitement and zest for her poor, pathetic life.

His warm and loving eyes turned cold when he turned to me.

"Did you understand what I told ya so far?"

"I got lost about the time you were talking about the "holes." I said in monotone.

The old man scowled and turned to his wife. "Linda, take our sweetie pie into the house and make her summin in the kitchen. Make me summin too."

The old, wispy woman, like a hypnotized zombie, took hold of the girl's hand and led her into a house that was just a rickety as the car.

He snapped his finger at me face and pointed towards the direction of three to four tents.

_Don't snap your dirt old fingers at me, you prune._

It took all the dignity within my soul to follow him across what I'd forever know for the rest of my life to be the "campgrounds".

"The number of boys we got here increased since five years ago so we separated them into tents. A, B, C, and 'D' is where the boys be eatn'." He pointed a little further off. "Down there's a shack where you do the T.V. watchin and relaxin. We gots a pool table too, kid. Ain't we Ritzy?" He winked at me—or at least he tried to.

He led me around in circles, repeating things he thought he didn't say yet. Then suddenly he stopped.

"Boy, do you see and guard towers? Any wired fences?'

"Should I?"

He slapped me in the face, which surprised me so much I gave a little squeak.

"Don't be fresh with me, kid. You wanna run off? You just go right ahead. We won't take you back in once you do. Just a fun fact for you; we're the only ones who got water for three hundred and fifty miles." He grinned, then spat on the ground.

"So you try and run away! And if it ain't the thirst that kills ya, it's the rattlesnake or the yelleh-spotted lizard."

"I like lizards." I smiled.

He spat again, this time, some went in my eye.

"You ain't gonna like these."

He cackled and left me alone with my one suitcase in front of a dirty-green tent with the letter "C" drawn very badly upon one of its door flaps.


	3. Possum

3

I can't say much about my tentmates. There were only three of them.

And I hated them all.

I hope they're all burning in hell right now, those little—

Anywhoosers...

I entered the tent with the most dramatic entrance I could possibly muster, and jumped in, screaming. I ran around in circles, grabbing inanimate objects (and a beetle) from the floor and flinging it into the air, hoping to get _someone's _attention.

_Oh shit_.

No one was in the tent.

My arms drooped down, and at that moment... **they **entered.

The first one that came in was the least hatable out of all of them. He stared at the scrungee in my hair, and then at my pink overalls.

"My mother is a single parent," I said simply, hoping it was enough of an explanation for him to be satisfied and not laugh at me.

He smirked, and nodded, brushing me off. He walked over to his cot and sat down, wiping his armpits with a dirty towel.

Another boy practically leaped into the tent, making a dramatic entrance not nearly as dramatic as mine... OF COURSE. His gray hair resembled a dead raccoon as it swooshed around whilst he was jumping up and down. He had a very youthful face, with those freckles and that annoying kind of nose that you see on Hannah Barbera cartoons, which made his gray hair look even more out of place.

"OH MY JEEBUS!" He cried, lunging at me and knocking me over. "A GIRL! OH THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE! A GIRL AT GREENLAKE!"

I kicked and punched at him until he got off. When he did, I brushed the dust off my clothes and told him in the simplest way that nothing in my anatomy was, or resembled a vagina.

The boy looked disappointed.

He sat down on the cot next to the other boy who was wiping his armpits with the towel.

The third boy entered. He was the one who pissed me off the most because he thought he was black. Now you people out there, I'm not some racist biggot you politically correct people think I am. Hell, I wasn't always the chain-smoking, child-hating son of a bitch you think I am either. But I find it very annoying seeing an Irish boy who would fry up like a sausage if he ever went to Africa pretending to be some MC Hammer wannabe.

He walked in with a proud, and overly-done gangster stride and looked my up and down like I was some hot babe. "Wassup, doll," he said, smirking.

"Shut your mouth boy! I'm a girl." I said as sassily as I could.

He looked almost as disappointed as the gray-haired boy. His smirk grew, and my pink overalls suddenly felt pinker.

I turned around to face them, stamping my foot. "IM NOT A GIRL, HEAR?"

"Hey, girlie, don't get yer panties up in a bunch," said MC Whitey. The other boys snickered. Oh wow, an Irish boy pretending to be from the hood with a southern accent.

Nice.

The first boy stopped wiping his armpits and stood up, sticking out his hand for me to shake. I stared at it, helplessly imagining it was a bog of insects and under-arm creatures. I pretended not to see it, and he lowered his hand.

"I'm Nick. This here's Marcus," he said, pointing to the caffeinated boy with gray hair, "and that one over there prefers to call himself Numba One."

I stared at Numba One. "Why?" I snorted.

"Because I am!" he thundered, lifting his arms as though he had some sort of godly power within them.

I backed away, frightened.

_This is too much!_

I fled from the tent, blindly heading for the old man's cottage. I burst through the back door, finding myself in the kitchen.

The 'family' was sitting together at a table, having some sort of road-kill possum for dinner. They turned to me, all in shock.

"_I can't stay here!" _I cried.

The old man wiped his hands with a napkin and got off his chair. He reached out and grabbed my neck with one wrinkled arm.

"Now...'boy... You deserve to be here. And whether you think so or not, you're _stayin'_ here." He released his grip from my neck and kicked my behind towards the door.

"Now GIT OUT—"

"—_stay for dinner_."

Silence.

Everyone, even the quiet old woman, turned to the girl, as if doubting if she'd actually said what she did.

"Stay for dinner," Lou repeated, that stupid smile on her face. She turned to the old man, who's boot was three inches from kicking me again. "Can he stay for dinner, grandpa?"

The old man knotted his eyebrows, and mustered a fake chuckle. The old woman said nothing, but continued to stare out into space.

"But Sweetydoodle, this boy's a criminal, see? We can't just invite them criminals to our house for dinner. This here's a prison, you see? You don't invite prisoners for dinner..."

There was another silence.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Well, because it ain't allowed, that's why. Plus," he said, glaring at me, "I don't like this one at all. He stenches of..." he sniffed me. "Estrogen."

"He looks hungry,"

He looked at me, examining the dark circles under my eyes and seemed to even hear my rumbling stomach.

"What do you think, Linda?" He turned to the old woman.

She said nothing.

"Yer a lucky one. Ma wife seems te like ye."

I stared at the woman who didn't even blink once since I came into the kitchen. I thought a saw a cobweb forming behind her ear.

He grabbed the collar of my shirt and led me to the only empty chair. "Sit," he said.

I sat. The scary girl, who was behind me, smiled, but said nothing, continuing to eat her possum meat.

The old man scooped up some peas from a bowl and dropped them onto my plate. "Eat," he said.

I picked up one pea with my fingers and stuck it in my mouth. I was hungry as hell, hence it wasn't that bad.

The girl stared at me and smiled whilst chewing.

I knows it's wrong, but I hated her even more that day.

"And don't you tell them _boys_ about any of this," the old man growled, spitting bits of chewed possum everywhere. "They'll eat yer up."

I stared down at my food.

"At least they don't have to eat this."


	4. Wilson Tells my Future

4

It went on this way, me coming to their house for secret dinners once a week, upon Lou's request. It turned out that their food was a lot better than the shit they fed the other boys. Plus I got to be in an air-conditioned home for thirty minutes a week.

I remember the very first hole I dug, and the day that I dug it, too. It was a Sunday. My mother would be in church. Oh, God, I can imagine her entering the church, and Pastor Simmons starting his sermon;

"We all are led astray by evil, evil people in our community every once in a while. Take Susan Sevillo's family, for example. Look at her shameless son and you will see what the signs! The signs of pure EVILL!" And the crowd will cheer an "Amen" as my mother will shrivel in her pew.

I stabbed my shovel angrily into the dirt again and again, making bits of it fly all over the pace.

A shadow appeared from behind me. It was the tall one... Rick, Nigel, or something like that.

"You miss your mother, don't you?"

I said nothing, and continued digging silently.

He hawked, and spat at the crusty ground. Putting his hands on his hips and looking up into the sky he said, "Yuup, yup. I miss her, too. Don't miss her boyfriend, though."

He then looked down at me, "You got a girl, back home, kid?"

I stopped digging, and squinted into the sun.

"Do I look like I've got a girlfriend, Nigel?"

"It's Nick," he said without the slightest hint of irritation. "Well I've got a girl back home. I left the place three months ago, so she prob'ly got some other nice guy who can keep out of trouble. We had plans, too. We were gonna get married, have a son..." he nodded to some invisible stranger in front of him.

"We was gonna name him Alan." He smiled, took out a toothpick from his pocket and put it into his mouth. "He was gonna be our angel son. Who kept outta trouble and ate his veggies..."

"Then what happened?" I asked him.

"I got in trouble," he smiled crookedly. "Got caught drunk and speed-driving on the highway in my moma's boyfriend's car."

He asked me what I did to get into this Greenlake mess.

I simply told him an old man with a stupid chocolate Santa had framed me. He laughed, said I was funny, and left.

It took me twelve hours that day to dig that damn hole.

When I finished, I had to walk alone back to camp.

Now those ungrateful little maggots in Camp Greenlake today never knew how good they had it. They had a pool table, and working bathrooms.

Those days, each tent had an outhouse. That was it.

There was no rec-room.

We had a pack of cards… but really, that was it.

I remember how worn they were. I remember they had pictures of some naked woman at the back... Venus, or someone like that. Besides Lou and that crazy old woman, Venus was the only female within two hundred miles. The best-lookin' one I might add.

"Come play, little man," Numba One said, when he saw me enter the tent, exhausted.

They were gathered together on one of the cots and playing that idiotic game of poker.

"I don't know how to play." I said, tiredly.

"We'll teach yer. Come on!"

I grumbled, but found a place to sit.

There was really nothing to gamble. There was deodorant, and getting others to dig holes for them, and a dead beetle that Marcus claimed to have spoken to him and told him about his future.

I was able to win once. I won the dead beetle.

I stared at it, pinching its dry body between my thumb and finger. I looked into its eyes that were out of focus and gray, and wondered if its soul was still in there.

I put the beetle under my pillow. Until this day, I really don't know why I had kept it.

"You can hear it, can't you?" Marcus asked, peering at me with his large, black eyes. "It told me I was gonna be rich some day. That I'd be swimming in money!" He laughed, and laid back in his cot, hands behind his head.

"Don't look so disappointed, kid. In my opinion, you got the best prize of them all." With one chuckle, he fell asleep.

----------

I was startled by something wriggling under my pillow.

"HII!"

A strange, black bug had jumped three feet into the air and landed on my nose.

I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my mouth.

_Who are you? _I demanded.

"I'm Wilson, the magic beetle. I have come to tell you about your future."

My eyes widened, and I looked at Marcus, who was fast asleep.

_Why?_

"Because you're special and because the world is a wonderful plaace! Whee!" Wilson giggled cheerily and jumped up and down on my face.

"Do you wish to know your future?"

_Yes, Wilson, tell me._

"You are going to lead a lonely and sad life. People will hate you, and you will die in a jail cell."

I thought-laughed... since my voice box wasn't working.

_Silly bug. God can't be that cruel. _

Wilson giggled. "Silly human. Who said it was God who is watching you?"

Suddenly a whoosh of fire burst from under the cot. Flames licked at the blankets, and my pillow, and my hair.

"Goodbyeeee... wheeee!" Wilson bounced away, leaving me screaming and screaming...

* * *

"GIT UP, BOY!"

The thin sheet that sufficed as a blanket was pulled from me, and it was suddenly so cold.

"GIT UP!"

My eyes were able to open. The old man was standing over me.

"Didn't ye hear the alarm this morning? The other boys are up, and eatin' their breakfast."

He pushed me over the bed, and I landed with a thud. I was too tired to even know that I was lying face-down on the floor.

"Ye have five minutes to git ready and eat breakfast."

I grabbed my pink overalls (which I had been wearing for three days) and ran after the old man, still pulling up my overalls.

"HEEYY!" I cried after the old man.

He stopped, and faced me.

"What d'ya want, boy?"

I frowned.

"A new change of underwear."

The old man formed an "o" shape with his mouth, and then laughed.

"You telling me, ya been wearin' the same underwear for four days?" He slapped his knee, and I was suddenly very, very irritated.

"There's a plastic bag under yer cot. If ye paid attention to anything I said, ye would have known that. It has your 'change of underwear', and two blue jumpers that are washed every week."

"Wow, I feel clean."

He cackled and sent me 'on my way.'

"I WILL NOT BE TREATED LIKE THIS!" I shouted after him, while also still trying to pull up my pants. "I HAVE A SOUL!"

"Not in Camp Greenlake," he called after me, and disappeared into his house.

* * *

"Look at me, you buffoon! Where did you put my underwear?" I stood over Marcus, who was sitting on his cot and averting my glare.

"I sold it."

"YOU SOLD MY UNDERWEAR?"

"It's very valuable. It's worth a lot of shower soap and smuggled items."

"But it was _my_ underwear!"

He shrugged and said whilst picking his nose,

"You can get it back. I sold your shit to an A-tenter named Gambit."

I sat on my cot and cried. I suddenly became conscious of something wedged between the cot and my pretty pink bum.

It was Wilson, the dead beetle.

AAAAAAAAAAIIIIII!!

I ran out and hurled Satan's pet as far as I could. It landed on someone.

_"What the hell?"_

Oopsi.

"Who threw this?!?"

Gambit appeared with Wilson, still intact—that relic of pure evil—between his thumb and forefinger.

Must get rid of beetle… must not get raped by A-Tenter…

Just then a cloud of a wonderful and dastardly plan began to form in my porridge bowl of a brain.

I ran, arms flailing towards him, tears flying from my eyes and corroding anything in their path.

"Oh, my Wilson! My Wilson!"

Gambit saw me and sighed with great and wise sadness.

"Oh, God, it's him."

_"Him?"__ Good Lord! Three days in this pile of manure and I've been nicknamed already!_

"Oh my sweet, beautiful Wilson!" I sobbed, taking the beetle, which was now missing three of his legs, from Gambit's shocked hand.

"Oh! That reprehensible, detestable boy took it from my loving care and threw it into the desert! It's a good thing your eye broke its fall!"

At that moment, Marcus walked out of the tent, yawning and naively unaware.

"It was HIM!" I pointed at Marcus with one quivering finger.

Marcus sniffed the air, sensing danger, and ran back inside the tent faster than you could say _sour crumpets._

Gambit trudged towards the tent where Marcus hid, pulling up his orange sleeves in a threatening, villain-like way.

"Wait—stop!" I cried.

Gambit revolved his frighteningly thuggish body to face me.

"Don't you want to touch it?"

Gambit's eyes widened, as he backed away.

"Look, man, I don't swing that way..."

"No," I said, "I mean the beetle. Don't you want to touch it?"

"No, that's okay."

"But it will tell you your future!" I said in that tone Barney used to tell the children a wonderful story about speeding rockets and pointless nostalgia.

After pondering over this great decision, he walked over and stroked the dead beetle's head with one finger.

"Oh! OH MY GOD!" I cried, putting my hand over my eyes, trouncing the massive vision of Gambit's brilliant future from my eyes.

"What? What?" insisted Gambit eagerly.

"There's a woman, a beautiful woman! And there's another one! They're standing on either side of you, laughing drinking champagne. You have so many rings on your fingers. By Jeebus, man! You're a pimp!"

Gambit chortled evilly. Other boys who had heard began cheering him on.

"Really? I'm going to be a pimp?"

"My, my, Gambit, you sure have that pimpish, abusive charm, don't you?"

"Yes. Yes, I do."

Then I opened my eyes and smiled calmly at him.

"Tell me more," he said, nodding his head encouragingly.

"I will... aaactually... I'll just _give_ you my awesome dead beetle corpse."

Gambit's face lit up. "Really?"

"Why, yes," I said cheerfully, "In return for two clean changes of underwear... if you have any, of course..."

"Oh, I do, I do!"

He rushed into his tent and brought them out. I greedily rushed over and pried the precious booty from Gambit's hands.

_My babies!_

I flicked the dead beetle at Gambit, who eagerly held it in his hands in all its glory. Other boys gathered around, some even begging to touch it.

How sad it seems that the older we become, the stupider we all seem to get.

A tear of pity slid down my cheek, and I wiped it away with one regal hand.

I mustn't let these people's stupidity weaken me!

I walked in only to be greeted by Marcus standing, dumbfounded before me.

Looking imperially at him with all my kindness and glory, I nodded.

"You may bow to me, if you wish," I said.

Marcus remained in his unproductive little position and didn't budge.

Just then Nigel—I mean Nick, entered the tent, chewing on another blasted toothpick.

"That was one rad thing you did out there," he said nodding at me, "I didn't think you had the balls, kid."

"I have plenty of balls, thank you." And I stormed off to the showers to change into my prize-winning underwear.


	5. Burned Alive

**5**

It was my third week at that dastardly, dastardly place.

Lou still hadn't stopped following me, Marcus still gambled away objects of personal hygiene from my crate, Nick kept telling me about his girlfriend who is "obviously" screwing checkout-counter guy back in Springfield … and Numba One kept hitting on me.

"You're just not my type dude. I'm a dude, and you're a dude… and it just won't work… cause dude, I'm not really into dudes…"

He winked slyly at me. "Yeah… what a waste of that sexy little Y-chromosome you got."

Numba One ends up getting out of Greenlake in about a year. He marries a rich, but slightly psychotic widow. He later has a spicy affair with his eighteen-year old pool boy, Paolo and leaves his wife whilst she is pregnant with a boy. The woman becomes a drug addict and quickly empties her gigantic bank account after her heroin and gambling addiction. The son, Ricky, becomes a juvenile delinquent and the mother kills herself.

Numba One gives me another wink, and steps out of the tent with a healthy, thankful smile.

"I love life!" he exclaims whilst adjusting his crotch.

I shake my head at his stupidity and smile at Wilson —or what's left of him—and sigh.

Although he never stopped scaring the shit out of me, and there was something very, very evil about him, I was so very much attached to it—and I think the strangest part is that I think it was the evil itself in Wilson that had drawn me to its hollow, decomposing little corpse.

"God hates you," he said cheerfully with his see-through black beetle eyes.

I looked up to see that Nigel—OH FOR GOD'S SAKES, MARION, IT'S _NICK! NICK!—_was staring at me in the strangest way. His mouth was shaped in such a way that his face was melting and a waxy little frown was moving down his face.

"You look different," he said.

"Different, how?"

"It's like there's a shadow following you wherever you go. Your eyes look darker and- you look really old."

I snorted. "That's because I am beautiful no matter what they say. And I am beautiful in every single way."

Nick nodded, seeming to understand. "Words can't bring you down."

"So don't you bring me down today."

* * *

It took more than twelve hours for me to finish my hole. I held in my pee the whole time because somehow the prospect of relieving my bladder in the middle of a desert where a rattlesnake can jump up and make me sterile with just one bite, did not appeal to me.

It just didn't.

The old, rickety Walker car arrived just as Nick was spitting into the hole he had just finished. We all knew what that meant.

"I wonder what he did to get here," Nick said, although I could tell he was thinking about something else. He seemed distracted that whole day.

Numba One licked his lips hungrily.  
"It's probably another delicious man- I MEAN GIRL!" the last word he said was squeaked out of him, and he put his head down immediately, avoiding the petrified stares of his Greenlake comrades.

The small, black car looked incredibly out of place in the dry, cracked scenery as it slowly, but surely tottered our way instead of going towards the Warden's house first. Although he had finished digging his hole, Nick stayed curiously behind. The only person who kept digging was Marcus.

Old man Walker stepped out of his car, looking either constipated or very pleased with himself.

He looked into the back seat and said, "Well come on. I ain't going to open the door for ya. This ain't a girl scout camp."

The door shyly opened, and a fragment of a pale face peered out into the harsh sun.

"Say hello to your fellow hell-members."

"Hello," said a soft, dark voice.

"This here's Tommy—"

"Thomas," said the voice from inside the car again.

"Tommy here is not getting any special treatment… no matter what he thinks," said the old man.

I wonder what he meant by that.

"Well, git out, boy. The longer ya take, the later it's gonna be when ya finish yer hole."

The small car door widened and two small feet stepped out.

Tommy couldn't have been more than fourteen. He had huge, black eyes and a face that looked quite pale and sick. In his hand he held a small dinosaur toy with a broken leg—a stegosaurus.

"Whachoo got there, little boy? Is it a toy from your mommy?"

The old man chuckled at Marcus's comment like a playground bully.

_What an idiot._

Marcus made a grab for it, but Tommy protectively hugged it close to his chest. He had the body of a ten-year old and the face of a tired old man.

"It's my little brother's dinosaur."

There was something about the way he said it that made Marcus shut up.

The old man put a dirty hand on Tommy's perfectly clean shoulder. His clothes seemed very expensive, but extremely GAY.

"Tommy here started a fire in the back yard that killed his little brother." The boy winced at the words and kept his eyes down.

"His parents don't know what to do with him, so guess who decided to take Tommy under their wing out of the kindness of their hearts?" He spat into a crack in the ground, and pushed Tommy towards me.

"Here. Now yer not such a sissy of the group, ain't ya?"

"Your grammar is revolting," I said, and handed Tommy the shovel that Nick had finished using. He was already heading back to camp, and didn't seem to be interested in our new tent member. In fact, there seemed to have been some resentment from Nick towards the new kid…

The old man was heading back to the car, and Tommy stood next to me, staring expectantly.

_Crap, what do I do?_

"Umm…here. This is shovel," I said slowly, making sure he understood my big-people words, "You dig hole."

He stared at me still, and the dinosaur looked at me with the exact same expression.

"Go now. Go." I said to him.

He obediently took the shovel from my hands and began digging. However, he did not let go of the dinosaur.

"It helps if you put yer stupid toy down," Marcus said.

Tommy ignored him and continued to diligently dig his very first hole. There was a glint of determination in his black eyes.

The new kid finished his hole at nine o'clock pm.

I couldn't bring myself to leave him alone in the desert so I dug very slowly, pretending to be in great pain.

Marcus had finished his hole and was already back at the tent.

It was only Tommy, me, and the creature from my worst nightmares…

"Wass wrong, sweet cheeks?" Numba-One asked.

"I broke a nail," I lied.

"Don't waste your time with the new kid. You don't have to slow down for him. I mean—dude, did you even hear what old-man-Walker said? He killed his little brother! He set him on fire!" Numba One flailed his arms around.

"Can you fucking quiet down? He's right there, you idiot. And He didn't set his brother on fire. He just happened to have started a fire that scorched his brother alive."

There was a sniffle, and then a quiet sob.

We both looked over Tommy's direction. He was leaning over his shovel and covering his face, crying.

His dirty clothes were beige from the dust, and the light of the setting sun made his skin look even sicker.

"You made him cry," Numba One said.

We both stared at him as he helplessly sobbed quietly to himself.

"Go over there and make him stop," I said, "Say something about his cheeks."

"Cheeks?"

"Whatever. You know what? Get the fuck out of here before you make him kill himself. Go!"

Numba-One walked guiltily away. Dragging his shovel behind him.

* * *

I tried to continue digging, but the kid just wouldn't shut up. His sobs were so pitiful and lonely that eventually I couldn't stand it anymore.

I walked up to him.

"Excuse me, what the hell is your problem?"

He didn't look up.

"Can you stop crying? Please?" I said maybe a little too desperately.

"I didn't—" he choked.

"I'm sure you didn't," I said, not even knowing what he was talking about.

"I didn't kill my brother."

I shook my head in pity. Although I hated people in general, somehow, all the pity that I never felt went out to the poor kid.

I patted him awkwardly on the back. "Listen, you're just wasting time. And you should stop crying now, so….. umm… stop crying.

"Stop crying right now."

He didn't stop.

"Listen, the sun is going down—"

"You don't understand!" His sullen ,quiet aura disappeared to be replaced by a frightening desperation.

"I have to go back!"

"It won't be for a long time, buddy."

He grabbed my shoulders and dropped the dinosaur, not even noticing it.

"Please. You have to find a way to get me back there!"

I brushed him off.

"Chill down there. Greenlake isn't so bad. It's close to hell, but you'll survive a year."

"You don't get it!" He suddenly lost it.

_Oh God. He's gonna set me on fire, isn't he? _

"My brother isn't dead!"

_Wait_…

"What?"

"I saved him. I saved him from the fire and hid him in the woods. I tried to tell the police, but they weren't LISTENING TO ME!"

His sobs were now violent tremors.

"We have to go back!" he said

"We have to go back TONIGHT!"

* * *

**Highschool sucks. I never have time for anything.**

**But today I had the worst urge to write something.. **

**I can't really say that this fic is **_**just **_**humor and suspense. I kind of wish they had more options than that. There is drama and retardedness and, yes, _romance_. The mood of the chapters will change depending on my own mood, and I guess it will keep the story from getting boring that way.**

**Lots more to come.**

**This chapter is dedicated to Ziggygurl and Jommoj. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading!**


	6. Help Me!

**So, there will be parts where the flashbacks will be mixed with the main story. I worked for an hour to fix it, but Fanfiction is failing on me. Sorry for that little inconvenience. You should be able to tell when it is the flashback of Thomas's past and the moment where he is in CGL digging holes. :)  
Hate it, love it;  
just  
enjoy it.  
**

6

"What are you doing?" Thomas asked as he walked towards the eight-year old boy who was squatted over something on the ground.

"Shut up and leave me alone," replied Gabriel.

This enraged Thomas, but he tried to keep it under control.  
"Why do you always blame me for everything?" he said. The hurt in his voice cracked through.

"You broke Daddy's TV. Now he's leaving us."

"Dad isn't leaving because of that. He left because he's always fighting with Mom for everything, and he got sick of it."

Thomas said this with a strong voice, but he did, in fact, blame himself for every scream, every slamming door, and every punch that his father had graciously given to his mother.

The last straw was when he and Gabriel were playing baseball inside the house with wooden spoons and tennis balls, and pillows.

_I love pillows..._

Thomas hit a home run, which knocked over the tall lamp, sending it crashing into the new color TV.

His father rushed in, hearing the noise. However, Thomas and Gabriel had not noticed their father's facial expression as he stared at his broken television. It was the pure horror in his mother's face that told them that something very bad was going to happen.

_**Marion**_

For what seemed like a long time, I didn't know what to do.

His neat, black hair was a mess, now, and his black polo shirt buttoned up all the way to the neck was dusty—and not worth all the money that it was.

Finally logic managed to seep into the mining field that was my head and gave me the ability to speak.

"We can't do anything without finishing our holes first. The old man checks every night to see that we dug them. We have to finish these holes first, okay? Do you understand?" I spoke to him slowly.

The desperation in his eyes never completely left, but it was now mixed with disappointment and self-restraint.

He took his shovel and began digging with more determination than he had before.

I was basically finished. Thomas was not even half way done.

I didn't know why I was doing it, but I was helping him… helping him as if I really did have a chance to get out of there that night.

Instead of roaring in anger and dragging one of the children by the hair, their father looked at their mother and said, "I can't do this anymore."

This sent Thomas's mother into hysterics.

"Alex! Please!" She cried, chasing after him as he walked quickly upstairs to their bedroom.

"Alex. Will you stop packing and just look at me?" the mother begged.

The children stayed in the foyer, unable to move. They just listened to what was going on upstairs.

"IT'S _HELL _HERE, SARAH! YOU ARE TURNING ME INTO A MONSTER!" cried his father as his voice echoed through the halls..

"No," said the strange new tone that came from their mother. Thomas could imagine time freezing at the second floor as the word was uttered.

"You have _always_ been a fucking monster."

There was a sound like a paddle hitting a large sheet of leather, and then the mother's scream. The beating had begun.

There was a second slap. Little did the children know, the second strike came from their mother. She had hit him back.

The air was still again.

"Let's go outside," Thomas said to his brother with a still voice. They left their parents to battle in the upper floor.

Gabriel just stared at his brother with utter contempt and ran outside to the yard.

Thomas just stood there, and only for a moment, he did not know where he was or what he was doing there.

_Why?_

_**Thomas**_

"So… why did you set your brother on fire and hide him in the woods?" the feminine-looking boy asked Thomas whilst helping dig the half-finished hole.

He didn't answer.

Thomas knew the boy with the scrungee on his head wouldn't understand.

"Why don't you talk?" asked the boy again.

Thomas wiped his nose, still sniffing from the embarrassing moment of breakdown he had just an hour earlier.

The boy with the scrungee sighed. "What's your name, again?"

"Thomas."

"My name's…" the boy hesitated, "…not important."

This ignited curiosity in Thomas for only a second, but then he continued to think of his brother dying in the woods.

Scrungee boy wasn't ready to give in.

"Sooo… if they think you killed your brother, why would they send you to camp Greenlake? The average crime here is stealing from old ladies and pinching small children". The stupid boy grinned at his own clever sarcasm.

If he wasn't helping Thomas, he would have pulled that scrungee around the kid's neck and—

"They took it as an accidental death. I'm sentenced here for twenty months for arson and all this other stuff."

The boy made an "o" shape with his lips.

"I was framed for kicking a hole in Santa's crotch," said the boy.

Thomas looked at the insanity that was before him and slightly feared for his life.

"What are you doing?" Thomas asked.

They were in the yard.

"Shut up and leave me alone."

Gabriel blamed Thomas for everything bad that happened in his life.

"I hate you," he finally said, without turning to look at Thomas.

Thomas walked over to see what his brother was doing. There were some matches in his pudgy hand, In front of him were some dry leaves and his three-legged plastic dinosaur.

"It's plastic," Thomas said to his brother, "you can't burn it with matches."

"Fuck off!"

Thomas was taken aback.

"Don't talk to me like that. I'm your older brother," he fought back the urge to hit his brother.

No. He was not going to be like his father.

"I don't know you," Gabriel said, continuing to attempt to burn the stegosaurus's tail.

His little brother had succeeded in creating a flame at the tip of the toy's tail. It looked like a fire Pokémon.

Suddenly there was a crash—the sound of glass completely shattering. The boys ran inside.

_**Thomas**_

The two boys walked back to the camp site in the cold, quiet night air.

"Hooo! Hooo!" the scrungee boy exclaimed. He smiled at Thomas.

"I'm an owl!" he smiled.

Thomas wanted to die.

"So, you want to escape from a place that's a hundred and twenty miles from the next, non-delinquent facility…"

Thomas did not answer, but kept on walking.

The asshole wasn't taking him seriously, and if he wasn't mistaken, Thomas was sure that he was being annoyingly stupid on purpose.

But what he said next took him by surprise.

"We could steal old-man-Walker's three-mile-an-hour funeral car."

"It doesn't go three miles an hour," Thomas said, not understanding the boy's language that seemed to be totally made up of sarcasm.

"Yes…" the scrungee boy picked at a scab on his elbow. "I want to get out of here as well. So does everyone else here."

The boy flicked the scab into the dark air.

"We need the help of an eccentric, gray haired genius, an older, experienced crime master, and a homosexual wigger."

The boy smiled at Thomas again and continued his bird calling.

"Hoo! Hoo!"

In the kitchen, their mother's face was smeared with blood.

Their mother had crashed into the glass table after their father had pushed her aside, as she wouldn't let him go through the door.

This unexpectedly sent Gabriel into an uncontrollable rage.

The small boy cried out in a sound that was full of anger and hurt, and grabbed a large shard of broken glass, throwing it at his surprised father.

He instinctively put his arms in front of his face, but the glass ended up creating a large gash on his forearm, and crashing into a hundred pieces on the floor.

The look on his father's face released a dangerous sense of terror in Thomas.

His father charged swiftly towards Gabriel and picked up the boy who had lost all of his anger and was now begging and whimpering.

Thomas looked to his mother to do something, she was staring at the floor and crying to herself.

Thomas followed his father as he dragged his little brother into the back yard.

What he saw as the door opened made him scream.

Thomas's heart was pounding. He was afraid the kid beside him would hear it and point and laugh.

"D" Tend was just three feet away.

"Guess what guys?" Scrungee boy said as he lifted the flap of the tent entrance.

Three other boys were inside. They were all staring intently at the scrungee boy. Apparently he had some influence on them

"Thomas wants to escape."

Thomas had three main fears at that point.

The first was that he would be rejected and forced to deal with the death of his brother that was his fault. Second, he would _not _be rejected, but still be beaten to a pulp by the tall, muscular boy who was staring at him as if he wanted to cut his limbs into a billion pieces.

The third fear was, of course, getting ratted out by one of these bastards.

"I'm in," said the tall boy.

"Me, too."

"Me, too."

Thomas didn't even know their names yet.

_Gabriel was right, _Thomas thought.

_Dinosaurs __**can **__catch fire._

In fact, the fire had spread over the dry leaves and had begun to eat a quarter of the yard.

It was getting dark, too.

And his father was dragging Gabriel towards the fire as he was helplessly kicking and screaming.

But none of that was the worst of it all.

The worst part was…

They lived twenty miles from the next house.

**A thanks to ****unsuspectingvictim****, who also has a nice Holes one-shot that you should check out.**

**I looked at my stats and saw hits from Germany and Finland and Japan and was like, **_**HOLY CRAP!  
**_**Fanfiction has changed a lot since I was last here.  
Like, seriously dude, oh em gee.**

**It's a bit hard to make the story consistent to Mr. Sir's current condition. The main mystery is how Mr. Sir died, but there will be more to come.  
You'll get drama, comedy, romance- whatever else I can think of.**

**Peace, love, and pure utter ecstatic happiness;**

**LeMoNsOuR**


	7. Sharkbait! Oohaha

**Violingirl101- I'd love a cookie!!! Especially right now...  
Mmm... chocolate chip. I wonder if there is something wrong with the hits page. Or maybe it's the fanfiction staff putting in random country hits to boost our budding self esteem. Yes! That must be it!  
_Who are you, Germany people?_**

7

"I thought you were going to be 'good' from now on," I said to Nick. "Now you're throwing away your perfect little CGL record to help Tommy here go back to his mommy?"

"Oh…" he said, a little dazed. "That's before I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant."

I stared at him blankly.

"You might as well find out today, kid, that babies don't grow from cabbage patches" he said, his eyebrows going up and down.

"But that's what my mother told me. You calling my mother a liar?"

"And a whore, to boot."

I picked up a fistful of sand and threw it at his eyes.

"Oh God! I'M BLIND!"

This was a sadistic and strange game that we played. I never really got the 'yo mama' jokes, and never found them offensive. But being in a juvenile delinquent facility made everyone just want to beat each other up.

We never took it personally—well I would have if it was three months earlier, but now it was a normal thing to have a black eye or a broken finger.

Thomas was standing unmovingly at the tent entrance, staring at us all like we were going to kill him with our scary jail knives. He seemed to be in denial of where he was, and already we all could tell Thomas looked at us like he was the better one because he wasn't a criminal.

"How are we going to do it?" Thomas asked.

"How are we gonna do what?"Nick asked obnoxiously. He liked to bring people to their breaking point.

"Get out of here," said the kid, whose pale was getting paler. "Escape."

"You think we can get out of here? Just like that?" Marcus looked at Thomas as if he were the stupidest person in the world and started laughing. Then the rest of us started laughing at him.

"But you just said a few seconds ago that you wanted to help me get out of here!" Thomas whined.

Nick ignored him.

"This shit yours?" Numba-One said and kicked at an expensive leather suitcase and a duffel bag next to a newly-installed empty cot that was obviously for a new tent member.

"Don't do that, you'll break it," said Thomas with a shivery voice.

"Okay, you guys. Don't kill him yet. It's his first day," I said. The boys laughed lightheartedly and beckoned for Thomas to walk over.

Thomas obediently toddled to his cot and stiffly sat down.

Nick sat next to him and put an arm around his shoulder.

"Actually, Tommy, boy," he looked at Marcus, Numba-One, and then me,

"We've been putting together an escape plan for a week now."

Thomas's large, black eyes widened, but then quickly resumed to a shifty glare. He did not trust us anymore after the stunt we pulled.

"We just needed an extra person, and then God gave you to us," Marcus said in a sing-song manner and lifted his open palm towards Thomas as if he was the almighty chosen one.

Thomas could keep down a gullible smile.

"Really?" he said hopefully.

"Yes," I nodded.

"We need someone to be the bait."

Thomas's face dropped.

"You have the most important role, I said in a high-pitched, encouraging tone. "Isn't that exiting!"

It was the second time that day Thomas wanted to die.

* * *

**You know what movie ruined my life?**

**_Yesman._**

**Why would they do that? Why would they feed such lies about optimism and self-discovery?**

**_Hey. There's an opening for volunteers at the hospital. Wanna join?  
_-Cool. Okay!**

**_Dude, someone quit in our drama group. We need someone to play his part. Can you learn four pages of monologues this week?  
_-Yes sir!**

**_My cat died. Can you bury it?  
_-Sure.**

**_You don't need to take the SATs but I'm your father and I say you have to study all month for it.  
_-Yes, maam--**

**_We never spend time together. You don't love me anymore.  
_-Yes I do.  
****_Let's spend the entire spring break together. You don't need to apply for university anyway.  
_-Umm... I--  
****_You're the best girlfriend ever!  
_-What? No... I didn't---  
****_I'm going to buy you a System of a Down shirt!  
_-OKAY!**

**I have never felt so overwhelmed with things to do in my entire life.**

**Let me tell you something.**

**Do not sign up for shit you can't do.**  
**  
This advice will save your life.**

**Love, peace, and utter ecstatic happiness,**

**LeMoNsOuR**


	8. Lou Meets her Destiny

8

_**A Long, Long, Long, Long while Later**_

It had been eleven months since our first attempt to escape with Thomas—almost a year.

He still thought that his brother would be waiting in the forest for him, feeding on small bugs and baby foxes.

None of us really had the heart to discourage him.

Marcus was the mastermind behind the plans. Yes, you heard me. _Plans_, as in plural.

You wouldn't know it, but he was really creative.

I was dubbed the Negotiator, since I was the only one who had a vocabulary list over fifty words, and because at one incident during the nineteen months I had stayed here, I managed to talk my way out of trouble after an incredibly smart attempt to steal the Walkers' funeral car and simply drive a hundred miles with a half-empty gas tank.

It's a wonder how stupid old people are when you threaten them about the Social Services.  
Those two words made Walker squeal like a little girl.

Nick was the one who turned Marcus's plans into reality with his stupid charisma and leadership skills that God never decided to grace me with. He had the strategic skills of a professional speed chess player.

"Don't ever say that again," Nick said.

"But you _do _have the strategic skills of a professional speed chess player."

Numba-One was just there.

He had no skills whatsoever.

He _was_ actually the bait before Thomas, but he really, really sucked at it.

At one point, we needed him to distract the new security guard so we could sneak into the water-delivery truck that came only once a week.

"Umm… I like yer gun," Numba-One said to the guard. Behind the big burly man, was the truck that seemed to be radiating with an angelic glow from heaven.

"Ain't it beautiful," gasped Nick breathlessly as he stared at the towering vehicle. Other tent members (A,B, and the new tent, 'D') were inside the newly installed Rec Room.

Thomas was playing at the also-newly-installed pool table with some B-Tenters.

Thomas had changed a lot since his first arrival. He no longer pissed in his pants at night, but he still spoke in his sleep, saying 'fire! fire!'

His voice was no longer shaky, but confident and self-assured.

His skinny limbs gained some volume in muscle, and his pale face was close to orange by the dust and the sun.

The cloud of gloom that followed him wherever he went seemed to completely disappear, but traces of it were left in his black eyes that never changed.

It was obvious he was still haunted by his brother.

Each of the members in my tent still had more than a year left in Camp Green Lake. Crimes were not taken as leniently back in the nineteen seventies. You kids these days got it good.

Each of the members also had a motive to get out of there as soon as possible.

Nick wanted to be with his pregnant slut girlfriend.

Numba One had a little sister with autism that was currently being taken care of by an abusive foster family. When he tried to run away and take his sister with him, the foster dad tried to stop him. Numba-One threw a crystal vase at his head and put him into a coma. The mother phoned the police and that's how he ended up at Camp Green Lake.

Now he wanted his sister back. He was eighteen now, so he could start a life of his own.

Marcus wanted to go back to his gang.

Who knew, right? At first we didn't believe him, but he was always managing to get tools, candy, and posters of naked celebrity babes from his 'people back home'.  
Apparently there is someone taking his place as leader, and he wants to go back before he is completely forgotten and thrown out into the city to fend for himself. He too was an orphan.

I just wanted to get my revenge on Mr. Whiskers—if he was still alive.

And see my mother.

I really missed my mommy.

But in a way, this place let me go outside the protective zone she had fenced around me.

Everybody knew about our attempts to get out of that hellhole, but no one thought C Tent was ever going to leave camp Greenlake.

They didn't believe in us, those whores.

Some attempts would be planned. Some would be spontaneous—like when an A-Tenter's lawyer came to talk to Walker, and Marcus could not help himself to a test drive of the lawyer's beautiful, red convertible.

The strangest thing about 'C' Tent, however, was the unlikely bond that we had with the Warden's kid, Lou Walker.

Lou started with inviting me over for delicious road-kill possum every Sunday. When the old man found out I had been sneaking dessert to my tent-mates, he sent me to the isolation cabin.

Ten years later, a lawyer found out about the isolation cabin after one of the kids got toe fungus from there and lost his pinky toe. We weren't allowed to have one of those anymore.

When Lou found out, she decided to invite the _whole _tent for dinner.

If it was one thing old-man Walker could not do, it would be saying 'no' to his granddaughter.

* * *

"Missus Walker," said Nick with his mouth full of food, "I never tasted raccoon that was soo good."

The old woman said nothing.

She never did.

I was surprised there were enough seats for the eight of us—The Walkers, Thomas, Marcus, Nick, Numba-One, and me.

Lou was staring at her new guests in her usual open-mouthed, blank expression at all of us hungrily devouring our food.

Her dull, green eyes were sewn on Marcus, which made him uncomfortable.

The cloud of gray hair on his head swished back and forth as he ate.

"I like her hair, Yer hair is like a squirrels hair," she said, smiling.

I sighed to myself.

To my surprise, the boys laughed.

"Sevillo, yo friend is so cute," Numba-One said to me.

I pretended not to hear them and continued eating, the oil dripping off my chin.

Lou was enjoying the attention. She wasn't used to being around people younger than forty.

"Flower, why ain't you laughing?" she asked inquisitively.

Thomas snorted and grinned at Lou. "You call him _Flower?_"

"Cause he's so pretty, like a flower."

The boys laughed adoringly.

I couldn't believe it! They found her stupidity… cute!

_It's a trick! Can't you see she's a conniving, evil daughter of Satan? _

"Matter of fact," said Nick, tapping his fork on his chin and reminiscing, "He _did _look like a flower the first day he came here with his beer belly and pink overalls…"

Lou giggled, which made everyone else giggle, except Mrs. Walker of course.

_Oh God. I wish I was dead._

The grandfather clock in the next room played 'My Bonnie' in a lazy, minor-chord.

Walker wiped his mouth and put down his fork.

"Well. It's time for you boys to—"

We all got out of our seats in a blink of an eye and hurried out.

"Not so fast. You gotta help with the dishes. _This ain't a girl scout camp_."

**God** I hated when he said that…..

None of the other guys knew about our Sunday dinners. Walker actually said if anyone found out, he would stab our knees until our calves were severed off, and then eat them for dinner.

I imagined him lifting the platter lid in front of a bright and smiling Lou, ready to feast on Human Limbs 'a la carte.

After the cleaning of the dishes, I thought we were free at last.

"I wanna show you my dollies!" Lou screamed excitedly, clapping her hands and jumping up and down.

Walker laughed nervously and shook his head. "Now, now, Lou. These boys have to wake up early tomorrow to dig their holes. They can't stay for dollies."

Lou frowned, her freckled face dimming a little and her pigtails wilting. Then she lit up with a smile again.

"I want to dig holes, too!"

Walker and my tent members laughed again.

"Aw, lil' girl. You can't dig holes," Numba-One said. "Only men can do that. Girls are too weak."

Lou crossed her arms. "I can do it! I dig holes for worms in the back yard all the time!"

Walker shook his head. "These are big holes. For big people."

"But I'm the same age as Flower!" she protested.

It was true.

Although she acted younger than she was, Lou was fourteen, turning fifteen. She was even _older _than me.

Older.

And yet her grandfather refused to see that she'd even grown boobs already. I mean, not that they were much bigger than mine, but still...

Walker's voice became firmer to Lou than usual.

"It's time to go to bed."

"Grampa, I wanna dig a hole tomorrow," she said.

This caused us all to raise out eyebrows.

Walker said, "Only bad people dig holes. The boys are bad. They have to dig holes. It builds character."

Lou smiled sweetly. "I wanna build character!"

Walker giggled lovingly and patted Lou's head. I shivered. Who knows what is living in her hair?

"But you already have lots of character!"

Walker coughed, "Honey dumplings, you can't—"

"Oh for God's sakes, Trout. Let her do what she wants."

The voice came lady Walker. She was standing like a ghost in the shadows.

Her voice sent a shiver down my spine.

I looked around. Everyone looked shocked.

Even old-man Walker's face froze in time. His mouth was open slightly, and his jaw was moving up and down, struggling to find words.

"There's never enough people to dig. You know that. It's time for Lou to learn her family responsibilities," she said in a cold, raspy voice.

I wonder what she meant by that.

I had never been so scared of a person in my life.

I could tell Lou was not used to her grandmother speaking either because she was also frozen in place, her green eyes wide with wariness.

It took a while for old-man Walker to come to his senses. He shook the shock out of his head and placed a hand on Lou's shoulder.

"I think it's time," he said.

I looked at Marcus. He had the same facial expression as Nick, Thomas, Numba-One and I. We didn't know what was going on, but we had a feeling there was much more going on that what appeared.

"So I can dig tomorrow?" Lou's face brightened.

Walker laughed. "Yup. And yer gonna be diggin a hole every day from then."

Lou's nose crinkled. "But I just wanna dig one hole."

"No!" Walker said firmly, which surprised her. "Yer gonna keep diggin holes until I say so. Get used to diggin holes as a part of your life."

Lou's eyes welled with tears, but she didn't say anything.

Then she said, "then I should sleep early too, huh?"

Walker patted her back. "That's my girl," he kissed her on the cheek.

Imagining old man saliva on my cheek was a nightmare. But Lou just smiled.

"Say goodnight to the boys," he said.

She turned around and hugged me. I didn't have the urge to push her off anymore. I could just stare at her with pity and awe and confusion.

"Gnight, Flower... Gnight 'C' Tent."

Then she walked upstairs.

It suddenly daned on me that Lou, in fact, _was _human.

And this place was as much of a jail for her as it was for us.

Except we deserved it and she didn't.

* * *

**Things have changed for me! but that's okay. I feel the same. I'm on my way, and I say**

**THINGS HAVE CHANGED FOR ME!**

**love, peace, and pure ecstatic happiness,**

**LeMoNsOuR**


	9. Flower

9

**Ten Weeks Later**

"Yer strong, Flower. I wish I could dig like you,"

She was staring at me again.

I continued digging, ignoring the long, shiny drool trailing from the side of her mouth to her bib.

Okay, it wasn't a drool, but she did have a bib—

…

Okay she didn't have a bib.

Jesus, you don't have to drag it out of me.

"Hey, Flower, I think someone gots a girlfriend."

Lou giggled and blushed.

I looked down at my shovel and realized it was in perfect trajectory if I decided to swing it up, and it happened to decapitate a red-headed lice-infested—

Oh Lord of feces.

I'M GOING TO HELL!

My mother told me before he died, my dad was a minister.

He travelled all over the world before I was born and the first five years of my life.

"Mommy I don't remember any of that."

"It's because you were too young to remember."

"I was five. I would rem—"

"Eat your cabbage, boy or you'll get a beating of yer life."

She adjusted her wig that she had bought since she was taking this new type of treatment.

Chemotherapy, they called it.

"One time, when yer daddy was takin' a trip to Canada to bring salvation to them savage Eskimo people, they invited him in for fish, fish blubber, and fish soup.

He says to them, 'all you have to do is believe. The rest is up to God'."

I rolled my eyes. Even at the age of nine I was a doomed atheist.

Mother continued.

"One cheeky Eskimo savage said, 'what happens if we don't'."

"What did papa say?" I asked, wide-eyed.

"Papa said, 'well, if someone rejects the gospel, they would have an unfortunate eternity in hell, tormented by burning flames all around them."

The thought scared me. I looked at my cabbage soup.

"How's it taste, baby?" she asked me, nodding at the bowl.

"It tastes like dung…"

All of a sudden her eyes bulged so huge I thought they were about to plop on her lap.

"Beetle," I finished.

"Dung beetle. A delicacy in Africa."

She didn't stop staring. For fear of her losing her eyeballs, I said,

"What did the people say to Papa after that?"

"The savage people then started whispering to each other, like they weren't sure of something. Then finally, an older guy said to Papa, 'Is it hot there?'

Daddy said, 'of course it's hot. It's fire.'

The shivering Eskimos nodded their heads in approval under the parkas that his their faces.

Then one of them said to Papa

'We'd rather be there than here.' "

My diaphragm attempted to make what I would call a laugh. The cabbage soup was still in my mouth and it was as if my face didn't know what to do with it.

It ended up squirting out of my nose.

"Jesus, Marion," my mother exhaled noisily, "Why you gotta waste food like that?"

Through my choking and sputtering, I managed to utter the word, "Joseph."

Blinking and confused, my mother hissed, "_what_?"

I wiped the corners of my mouth. "You said 'Jesus, Marion'. You forgot to add Joseph at the end."

My mother didn't understand what I meant until she said the words aloud; "Jesus Marion Joseph."

_Jesus, Mary and Joseph._

I laughed at my own blasphemous cleverness but the wideness of my mother's blue eyes caused me to stop abruptly.

"Boy, that joke was funny but if I hear you say it again I'll beat you silly."

Now as I glanced up into the hot sun, I'd switch places with an Inuit any day.

I looked beside me. Thomas was almost done with his hole.

It was unbelievable! This asshole was always the last one to finish digging when he came, and now he was the fastest digger in the history of Camp Greenlake.

He grew Rambo muscles in eleven months and shot up six inches in nine months.

He'd grown taller than Nick.

I, on the very fortunate hand, was still driving down heart-attack highway. Yay.

I couldn't even grow a single chest hair.

"Mother fu—"

There was a loud slump. Like a body bag being dropped off a two-story building.

Lou had fainted.

Again.

Thomas walked over to her and picked her up as if she were a potato sack.

He dropped her casually in his already-finished hole.

Lou was now the only person within half a mile that had shade.

We were one member short.

Numba One wasn't here.

That's because Numba-One's little sister had died.

The foster parents claimed she had fallen down the stairs.

"She didn't have all of her marbles, after all," said his foster father on the phone. "And she was always falling, tripping on things…"

Numba-One put all his effort in keeping his breathing under control.

Walker had let Numba-One use his phone for this specific situation only.

Maybe the old man did have a heart after all.

Or just Alzheimer's.

"I was the one who put you in a coma. And you had to punish my sister for that. You're disgusting, you know that? You're a fucking cold, heartless antichrist."

Thomas, Marcus, Nick and I were outside of the house. We weren't allowed in, but we could see and slightly hear through the small window of the Warden's cabin.

There was an attempt by the other person to speak, but our friend had lost it.

"FUCK YOU! WHY DID YOU KILL MY LITTLE SISTER? GOD, WHY DID YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO HIT HER? WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?"

His freckles meshed with the redness of his face and red hair.

It was scary.

Seriously.

Another attempt was made by the person on the other line.

"Freddy…" said the distant, authoritative voice.

But 'Freddy' had hung up.

Until that moment, none of us really knew what Numba-One's real name had been.

I mean… Freddy was just the whitest name ever.

Lou walked in the room, hovering at the doorway.

Freddy broke down crying.

It was hard to watch a person who never took life seriously turn into a pile of discarded panda bear manure.

Lou did a strange thing and picked up the phone receiver that Numba-One had slammed down.

She dialed.

It seemed someone had answered.

"Hello?" she said in a strange voice that I had never heard from her.

God, it was so different.

It wasn't the low, slurring, disabled voice that I always knew her to have.

This one was polite, steady… and

…not stupid…

"Hi," she said. "I'm from Camp Greenlake… Yes… That's the one. Anyway, I think I have enough money to change your entire life,"

It seemed the person on the other side sounded pleased.

"_How?" _he asked.

"We are going to press charges. I'm sure the money you'll owe Freddy then would be enough to change your entire life."

Damn. I did not expect that.

" Yes…" Lou nodded politely and cheerfully while Numba-One just stared.

"I'm sure there is quite a difference between a girl who fell down the stairs and a girl who was pushed down the stairs. I'm sure an autopsy would reveal that. I'm also sure that they would find signs of all the sick shit you did to her before as well. Have a nice day."

Lou hung up the phone and kissed Numba-One's tear-crusted cheek.

Then she left the room.

Numba-One stared open-mouthed at the phone, and then into space.

Then he took a crystal perfume bottle from the mantle, looked around and stuffed it in his pocket.

He also left the room.


	10. Chicken Legs

This chapter is made because of all of y'all who reviewed. I'm rarely encouraged to write anything anymore, so really, that's why people with more reviews tend to write even more, it's just this positive feedback loop that no one wants to admit, haha.

**-**

**TheAmethystRiddle – Was I mistaken, or are you really having a Holes play? If you are that's so frekkin khool! I love people who get into my stories. It makes my day, haha. Was that too narcissistic of meh? **

**IceQueen11 – Thank yer. I'm glad you find it original. It's my favorite fanfiction word! :P**

**Violingirl101 – Thank-e youh. *takes cooke* yum yum. Cyber flavored, my favorite!! :D you know, I can't help but always wish a German or Chinese kid would review. But they never do...**

-

10

"I thought that girl's head was as empty as a flower pot…" mused Nick. He had chewed away on his third toothpick and had then thrown it onto the ground.

"What do you find appealing about a piece of wood?" I stared down at the group of chewed up toothpicks on the duty ground.

"I dunno… just a habit I guess. Helps me get over ma addiction to the cigarettesss." He hissed the last part lazily and then just walked off.

Thomas was far ahead of us at the process of digging holes as usual. But at that precise moment he was helping Lou dig hers.

He was helping her a lot these days, and willingly, too. It was sad.

Numba One was gone. We never heard anything from him. But we did hear that both of his foster parents are in jail. I guess they had been abusing his baby sister after all.

Marcus's sentence was finished and he went free a week ago. Last I heard he went to Mexico or some shit like that. It wouldn't be until years later that I'd get a weird letter in the mail from a woman named Marie. She said that Marcus had died and he had left me much of his inheritance, which was not really that much.

"Doesn't he have any children?"

"Yes",

Nick never talked about their absences, but I knew he was affected by them.

"It seems like ever'body's goin' away 'sept for me," he said.

His pregnant slut girlfriend gave birth to a boy. That's all she said in the letter. He never spoke much anymore, and never attempted to help us with the escape attempts either. Eventually we stopped doing them.

* * *

Lights Out

"I think I love her," Thomas said, looking up from his bed.

"Boy, we all love her. She's a bombshell."

"What? I thought it was only me."

"No. I'm pretty sure everyone here wants to back it up on Rita Hayworth."

There was an awkward silence.

"Umm… what?"

"She was in that movie… you know…" I stammered. Didn't anyone appreciate classic beauty anymore?

"Dude, I don't know no Rita Hayworth."

"Well that's a shame. She is such a lovely woman."

"Listen, I'm not talking about Rita ho-Worth, kay?" he said frustratingly.

_What huge ginormous insect crawled up _his_ colon?_

"It's _**Hay**_wor—"

"I'm talking about Lou."

Another awkward silence.

"Ew…"

"God. I shouldn't have told you."

He turned away from me and covered his face with the pillow.

"That's really gross dude."

He didn't reply.

I decided I had tormented him enough and made an attempt to be empathetic and serious.

Hah

"Since when?" I asked.

"Since she made that call to Numba-One's dad . No girl that age does that."

"That's because she's Satan. How many times do I have to tell you this??"

He turned to face me again and lifted the pillow from his face.

"Dude. Shut the hell up about her. All she's ever been is nice to you. She's nicer to you than she is to me, and I'm busting my ass to get her attention."

I laughed.

"You're a freak," I stated honestly.

Thomas's sunburned face raged even a brighter shade.

"Fuck off."

I laughed again.

He sighed.

"I mean, did you even look at her lately?"

I frowned.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What ever," he said, and stayed silent the rest of the night.

* * *

"Flower. Wake up!"

"Nooo mommy don't leav—HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THAT SMELL?"

I opened my eyes to complete darkness. It only took a few seconds to realize that there was a sock stuffed up my left nostril.

OH MY GOD!!!

Thomas shifted in his cot.

"Seriously dude. Don't wake him up, for God's sake! He'll ruin everything!" Nick hissed to me.

I sat up and realized Nick was packing a bag.

I struggled to find words.

"Man are you--- you're—"

"I'm getting out of here," he said slyly and smiled in the darkness.

I panicked. "Well let's get Thomas! Just let me pack my shit it won't take—"

"NO!" he hissed and leapt to grab my shoulders.

"No," he said again, faltering.

"If he wakes up, _he'll _want to come too. That's gonna fuck all this up."

I just stared at him. He smelled like a dead goat. It was obvious he's been scheming and planning all week. He didn't even bother to clean himself.

"Dude you smell like shit," I held my breath.

"Look. _I'm_ going. Me. Not you. I'm going alone. Kay?"

"But but...

why?"

He sighed, and looked in panic to his right as though he was expecting someone to arrive any minute and seize him red-handed.

"Okay, you remember all those times we tried to—"

"Jesus, stop talking so close to my face. You're not gonna kiss _me_ with that stinky pinky breath, mister!"

He backed away, covering his mouth, breathing into it and smelling it.

"Yo that's gross. Don't do that."

"You're telling _me_," he said, wiping his nose with his sleeve.

His sleeve, in fact, was not orange, but green. He had left his uniform neatly on his pillow. It seemed Nick was extremely certain he was going to get away.

"Why are you leaving without us?" I asked as pitifully as I could.

He continued stuffing random things near his cot into the bag.

"You remember all those times we tried to escape? Together? The reason why all the plans went to shit was because there were too many of us trying to get out at one time. You understand? It's like when there's a fire in a huge building and all the people rush out in panic towards the door and get stuck there. And some people also get trampled."

He wiped his nose with his sleeve again.

" Well, kid we all kept trampling over each other to get out of this shithole when the best method was to get out of here discreetly. As non-big-dealio as possible. That way we'll all have our chance."

"Dude that was a horrible metaphor."

"Whatever. I can't stand this shit any more. I'm fucking nineteen and I'm still not out of a juvenile delinquent facility? Somethin' smells fishy to me, yessir!"

I took a deep breath and looked at Thomas. He was snoring. Good sign. Or not.

"So I guess you're gonna go find your pregnant slut girlfriend."

"Yeah. I'm gonna find my son, run away with ma lady, and raise that boy good."

"What if she doesn't want to run away?" I asked.

Nick snorted then laughed just loud enough to humiliate me.

"You kiddin, boy? Me and her, we planned this together. She drove all the way to Camp Greenlake and she's waitin 'for me 'bout six miles North."

He pulled the chord of his bad silently as he could to close it.

Then he stood up.

"So you're going now, huh?"

"Yeah. But you just gotta do me one favor. I'll owe ya."

"What?"

"Chase after me."

And he ran out of the tent.

* * *

Wow, what a surprise. I became the bait again.

As Nick ran for his life and I staggered behind, I heard a gunshot.

"_You stop runnin' boy, or you'll lose a leg!"_

"Oh shit oh shit!" I squealed, while attempting to pull my pajama pants up.

Nick was way ahead of me now, but I managed to hear what he called out,

"Let them catch you!"

"WHAT?" I screamed back. Nuh-uh. Oh noo he didn't!

"Let them catch you! Please!"

Another silence and then Nick had almost disappeared into the desert night.

I couldn't catch up.

"DAMN YOU, CHICKEN LEGS!"

I heard his last words as I tripped and fell into a hole, which hurt very very much.

"I'll owe ya!"

I looked down at my ankle, and although it was dark, I could tell it looked much differently than it usually did.

Oh yeah.

It's facing 180 degrees the other way.

Now I haven't told a lie since the beginning of this story and I'm not gonna tell another lie, no matter what.

But I saw my deformed foot.

And I fainted.

And I was out for an hour.

Actually the previous sentence was a lie. I'll never tell you how long I was out because it pains my soul to remember what fucking chicken shit I was.

The last thing I heard was,

"I got you now, fat boy!"

"Wow, Grandpa. You killed Flower. That's just great."

"He ain't dead. He's just gonna lose a leg."

I heard Lou gasp and then I was completely out.

* * *

I woke up to a scratching sound.

Well I wasn't in C-Tent that was for sure. But whatever I was laying on was just as bad as a C-tent cot that was for sure.

It was a sofa. It was the old sofa that belonged to the Walkers' old dead dog, Onion. By the smell of the couch that my body had been bathing in for the past how-long, I now knew why they called him Onion.

The scraping noise came from the corner of the room where Lou had her back to me, absent-mindedly scratching something on a desk.

"Was he caught?" I asked. My voice was hoarse.

Lou turned around with a start.

Her expression quickly turned calm.

"Took long enough. We was thinkin' you was in some coma or something," she said with her back turned to me again.

"How long?"

"Pretty darn."

There was a very awkward silence with me strapped to an onion couch and she having her back turned to me, still scratching.

"Why did your freak grandpa shoot at me?"

The turned around and looked embarrassed. Just slightly. She was still making an attempt to look indifferent. That was new. She never seemed the type to care what emotion she showed.

"That was me," she said. "I woke up and heard some noise and grabbed the gun first. Grandpa got up a few minutes later."

"You... shot at me?"

YOU SHOT AT ME?"

"We thought it was a robber. I mean, no boy was ever stupid enough to escape! I was surprised you managed to run a whole mile without gettin' yerself in a five-foot hole."

"I ran a mile?"

Lou smiled. Her teeth were blunt and white. Kinda pretty...

I mean they _weren't_!

They weren't! AHHH!!!!

I fainted again out of the mental stress.

...

Hey, I promised you the truth.

* * *

***ATTENTION S'IL VOUS PLAIT***

**First there were five, now there are two. I am currently giving anyone reading this to create a new character that will pop up in the story. I am looking for a new tent member, but if you have another non-juvenile delinquent character then go for it! I always enjoyed characters that I made appearing in other people's fics, and I'm sure you will, too. ****At any point from here on, you are allowed to submit a character.**

**Girl characters are also allowed to be submitted! But I'll only choose one. Tell me their  
names,  
past lives,  
attitudes,  
disabilities/special abilities,  
and what they look like. **

**Relationships to other characters are also permissible.**

_**Ciao**_**.**


	11. Jealousy

11

Jealousy

**Everyone reading this MUST MUST read **_**A Curious Matter**_** by TheAmethystRiddle! It looks like it's gonna be a really really great story! And this girl writes like a pro.**

**I mean, I think the reason why so many people are always reading those girl-in-Greenlake stories is because they are looking for a fanfic that makes them **_**feel. **_**Well sometimes you can get that from stories with actual ****plots****, you know? Just try them out. They really don't bite.**

**Some of you entered in characters that I requested in the A/N of my last chapter a long long long time ago. (I'm sorry for that by the way. Free time is as rare as the perfect hair day these days... at least for me.) **

**I've taken all of your characters into consideration and maybe some of you will see something you've suggested later in the story ;)  
**

**Anyway, this chapter is dedicated to ****violingirl101 ****because the next bit of this story's her idea.**

**Oh, and**

**More surprises to come...**

**The character I added in _this _chapter, however, is based on TheAmethystRiddle's suggestion. I hope you'll enjoy what you helped me create as much as I enjoyed it.  
**

_Jesus Christ._

She giggled at another thing he just said.

What the hell are they even talking about? Potpourri?

"Yeah. I like the lavender smell," I heard Lou say. She smiled at him.

Shit, I was right.

Potpourri.

They were two holes away from me.

Why does she consistently act stupid like that? We all know she's not a drooling dog anymore, but she continues the act.

It's so annoying just watching her laugh at everything he says.

He's not even a funny guy.

He's a poetic, emotional blow-up doll with muscles the size of a NASA spacecraft.

Then I heard a sound I haven't heard in a long time.

Old-man Walker's hearse car puttered towards us slowly but surely in the middle of the hot day.

Thomas shielded his eyes as he gazed at it.

"What's he bringin' today? More sorry delinquents to add to the collection?"

Lou nodded. "And mail."

Thomas and I said, "_What_?" at the same time.

We never got mail.

We were a population of about 30 people who no one wanted. That's why we're so far away from everyone else.

I continued digging, hearing Thomas's bragging and Lou's polite utterances.

I think I must have zoned out while digging my hole because I felt something light but sharp slap the left side of my face and fall to the ground.

It was an envelope.

I looked up to see the old man staring down at me.

"Ya got mail," he said.

He tried to sound intimidating, but I knew he was as confused as I was. Neither he nor I have seen an envelope during our stay at Camp Green Lake.

"Well, open it son!" he growled, and then spat a wad of some nasty gob into the sand.

"Privacy, please," I said, smiling up at him.

"Bah!" he walked away, hacking and spitting.

There was no return address. I couldn't believe they would even allow this to get sent in its condition.

I opened the envelope and unfolded the letter.

The spelling was atrocious.

"_Hey, kid._

_You obviously know who this is, cause no one else is gonna write to you anyway, so you might as well face it now. Me and my girl, we maneged to find a place to live with one of her old—I mean older sisters. _

_I wish you could see my littl baby. Well, he ain't a baby no more. He's almost a year old and he can walk already! I feel like shit that I was diggin a 5-foot hole in the sand while he was learnin to walk. _

_His name is Allan. I'm telling you I never loved anything so much. I bought him this little stuffed Squid from the thrift store that he takes wherever he goes._

_A lot of things changed when I returned to the real world. The people are shittier, and all these people are walkin around like they're always busy._

_It's a strange world out here, Flower. Get out soon or you never gonna be able to catch up with it._

_You might not hear from me again, I'm gonna be workin a lot._

_Peace_

_Love, _

_Yo Mama, bitch. Who else?"_

Well at least I knew Nick wasn't arrested or anything.

Still, I was jealous.

I was so fucking jealous at that moment I wanted to beat my chest like an ape and throw things into the sky hoping that it would knock someone up there to their senses.

"Hey, Flower, what's the matter?"

I looked up again.

Lou hovered over me, her shadow providing slight shade from the sun.

"This girl's stalking me. She was obsessed with me in like, the third grade and never stopped following me since. And now she knows where I am and sent me this stalker letter."

Lou smiled again, showing those teeth that I couldn't stop staring at like an idiot.

"Well, Flower. I don't think she can get to you here."

I sighed and was surprised at how sad that one sigh actually sounded.

I was actually kind of hoping it was—well— my mother who was writing me these letters

"Hello!"

The sound of that voice was like a cat giving birth in a helium balloon.

Right behind me, and I mean _right _behind me, was a boy of about ten years. He was _already_ in his orange jumpsuit, which was worn more neatly than Thomas or I had worn it.

"Hello, my name is Oliver!"

Whoah.

He had a lazy eye.

"What's _your_ name?" He tried again. His stupid pale lips were still stretched into a painful smile.

"Eye," I said.

"I mean—hi," I blurted quickly but dazedly.

Is it looking at me?

The boy gave a panicky giggle.

"My name's—"

"His name's Flower," said Lou, who came up beside me and threw her arm around my shoulder as if we were best friends.

At this point Thomas was looking at us. He gave me a glare, and I gave back a look saying, "I didn't do shit."

"My name's Lou," she said, shaking his hand, which was clean and extremely white.

"Oliver Pendanski," he said as-a-matter-of-factly.

"I couldn't wait to be in a camp!" he said excitedly.

How did this kid even end up in this place?

"That guy over there is my brother, Walter."

I looked just a distance away towards the Walker's black, ugly car. The old man was lecturing about raisins to this boy who looked exactly like Oliver.

Except he was dressed all in black.

And he was frowning.

Permanently.

I mean, if you looked at the guy, you would understand what I meant by _permanently. _

"Aww, they're twins!"

Oliver beamed at this.

"Don't you touch those raisins in my car again. Them raisins are mine," I could hear the old man say. Walter was just staring ahead, his black, greasy hair stringy around his face.

The old man gave him a shovel and pointed at Thomas.

"He'll be your mentor. Just ask him whatever you want. Don't ask me anything. Tomorrah I'd better see you in yer orange jumpsuit, or it's off to the buzzards with you."

At that he got into his car, and crammed a handful of raisins into his mouth before driving away.

The strange kid just stared at us. Oliver, however, was more keen to make friends and smiled at us politely. He tried not to look at the badly made cast on my leg.

Lou, however, was one not to give a shit about avoiding confrontations. Nodding at the dirty gauze wrapped around my ankle, she said, "If you're wondering about his foot, he tried to run away and then fell into a hole."

She took something out of the pocket of her gray jumper and the crackling sound echoed throughout the desert. It was the sound of heaven; a plastic wrapper of a piece of candy being opened.

She quickly popped the mint into her mouth, took another one out and gave it to Oliver. She took a third one out and gave it to me. Her smile disappeared when she discovered she had none left.

"Don't tell Tommy I gave ya that, ya hear?" She walked away after giving Oliver one stupid wink.

"Hey, Wally," Lou said.

"My name's not Wally!" the boy said in a low, gloomy voice.

"It's Darkness, okay?"

Ten years later, Oliver drowned in a lake.

Twenty years later, Darkness became the councilor of D-Tent. Of course y'all already know what happens after that.

* * *

**oh and THANK YOU -_iamshunspike_ FOR YOUR STORY ALERT/FAV AND REVIEW THAT MADE ME IMMATURELY GIDDY FOR A LONG PERIOD OF THE DAY. you know when something is insulting? Well your review is the exact exact opposite of that. Haha, that was awful. I'll find a more articulate way to thank you in the next chapter.**


	12. The Lost Boys

**HELLO READERS!**

**LeMoNsOuR is so sorry for not updating last since multicellular organisms have evolved from single-celled organisms. :) But she hopes she made it up to you with this chapter!**

**I wrote the next three chapters in fervor. I was like to myself, "Yeah! This is going to be so pimpinn!" I tried not to help myself though, because bad things happen when I begin to think I'm cool.**

**To avoid confusion, Oliver is not Mr. Pendanski of the future. It's actually Walter that you come to know and love... or hate as D-Tents councilor. **

**DISCLAIMER****: I do not own the idea related to the title "The Lost Boys" based on the classic and magical tale**_**, Peter Pan**__***Disney music plays***_

_***IMPORTANT*- **_**I've changed the ages around a little bit. Flower/Mr. Sir was first twelve when he first arrived at CGL and he turned thirteen a month after. By now he is... well you'll see. Thomas and Lou are both older than Flower and are fifteen_ :)_**_**  
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**PLEZ ENJOY AND HAVE A GREAT SUMMER**

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12

"How did you end up here, Oliver?"

Oliver shifted in his cot. His face was grimy, his hands were blistered, and his body was exhausted, but he still had that smile on his face. God, did that smile have endurance.

"Well actually—"

"Actually he didn't do shit," said Wally—I mean Darkness—I mean, whatever.

"I got him here. I burned down my English teacher's garage."

"Why?" asked Lou.

She had snuck out of her room and joined us at C-tent. She had been doing that for a month now. By this time I had gotten used to her stupid grin and obnoxious voice.

"He touched me inappropriately," said Wally. "So that day, I poured gasoline over his aloe Vera plants next to his garage and set them on fire. Then I broke into his house and set fire to his kitchen. That was on accident. I was trying to make popcorn."

"But Mr. Gupta was awake and saw who did it. The police came over that same night and started taking my brother away, but I told them I was the one who set the teacher's garage on fire," said Oliver, picking at his scab.

"The police really didn't give an ass which one of us went to jail, so we both ended up here," Wally finished.

"I don't mind, said Oliver sweetly. "I don't know what I would do if my brother was miles away."

Darkness rolled his eyes.

"So where are you from, Wall—"

Wally had fallen asleep.

Lou went back home and I turned off the lights.

When he thought everyone was asleep, Walter got out of bed, took off his sleeping brother's shoes and placed a blanket over him.

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**at the lake**

"I _love_ tuna!" She giggled her retarded fake giggle again.

Thomas said something, she whispered something back, and he blushed as red as a tomato.

Sick. Just sick.

My thoughts were interrupted by Walker's hacking.

"Boy. Come over here."

His voice was less harsh than usual.

In fact, it made me feel really, really scared...

I hopped out of my hole and left Lou standing there full of curiosity.

I stood in front of him, looking up. His nose hairs were white. I never really looked at his face before. It was full of these angry, distressed likes that were randomly scrawled all around his worn face. It kind of looked like a dead cactus.

He laid a hand on my shoulder.

"Sir, why are you touching me in an inappropriate manner?"

He surprised me even more by ignoring my comment. In fact, he didn't even seem to hear it.

"Marion, your mother died."

_Did you just call me Marion? How DARE Y—_

"What? My... mother died?"

Suddenly there was no sound. The wind stopped blowing, my heart stopped beating, and everyone stopped shoveling.

"When?" I asked.

"Six months after you got here," he said.

It has been more than a year since I'd been admitted into this craphole. I had seven months of my sentence left.

He just stared at me, trying to read my face.

There was a long, long silence that stretched far into space and disappeared. Suddenly I snapped.

"YOU NEVER TOLD ME?"

My breathing became raspy and the vision of his cactus face blurred as I knew that I was going to cry in front of these people.

It was the absolute worst moment of my life.

Well, except for that time when I shot this girl...

But at that moment it was the absolute worst moment of my entire life.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME? YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME YOU OLD SHIT!"

I pushed him. He tried holding me back. He didn't even get angry.

"Son, I really didn't know. The police didn't even know until someone found her car."

"Her car?"

"She was drivin' to get ye."

"Why the hell would she do that without sending me a letter?

"Oklahoma had fifteen letters from your mother addressed to you."

_Then why—_

"She wrote the wrong address."

"What?"

"In her address book, she wrote down the address of Camp Green in Oklahoma. Not Camp Green Lake in Texas."

"Are you... kidding me?"

"Her brain, son. You should know it wasn't at its best when you left. She had a... _thinger_ in her brain."

"A tumor". A _tumor_, you _fucking _moron.

He nodded. "It was in her brain. They said it got her vision in four weeks, and then some of her organs just stopped workin'. She was taken to the hospital and stayed there fer a few months in a lil' coma. When she woke up, the doctor told her she didn't have long. They were even surprised she woke up in the first place. Then one day the nurse came in and yer mom was just gone."

Turned out my mother was on her way to Oklahoma—to see me.

Oh, mom.

"They didn't know about you at first. None of the neighbors said that she had a son. Then someone told them that you were in jail. They searched all the nearby jails. Then they heard you were in a summer camp. Then they heard you were dead... Finally someone was smart enough to actually find where you were, son."

I knew why they took so long.

They didn't really give a shit.

I know that. Who would give a shit about me now?

Who?

I was crying by this time, and extremely embarrassed as well.

But I just stood there, my fists clenching and unclenching; my brain scanning for people to blame for this. I could find none.

I felt soft lips on my cheek and a lock of my hair (that had grown quite long) placed behind my ear.

Then Lou put her arms around me and I let her as I wept pathetically in the middle of the hot sun. When I looked up, Oliver and Thomas had come over as well. Darkness/Walter stood shyly a meter away from us but he still looked uncomfortably sympathetic.

Old man Walker took of his hat and shuffled off.

That night I walked in on Thomas and Lou making out with his hand in her shirt.

Thomas grinned sheepishly but Lou looked mortified. She ran out, her face as red as her hair.

"I'm sorry!"

Pfft. What did she even need to say sorry for? I mean, it's not even my business what she does or doesn't—

"WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?"

Thomas just sat there, his hair disheveled and a hickey forming in his neck.

"Relax. It's not like it was on your cot or anything."

For some reason, my body reacted to the situation by simply climbing into bed.

Thomas was still sitting on his cot.

"You're not mad at me are you?"

I clenched my jaw and closed my eyes.

It didn't bother me. I was just trying to cope with an awkward situation by completely...

Ignoring it.

"Sevillo!" he said, a little obnoxiously. "You're not mad, right?"

I turned to face him, but my vision was blurred by a red haze that grew and grew. The awkward silence fed me, although for him it must have been unbearable.

"You disgust me so much. I don't ever want to look at you again."

"Sevillo, don't be like that."

I didn't answer.

After a long silence, Thomas stood up. "You know what? Be like that. It's not even your fucking business anyway. You jealous I'm the only one getting any action in this place? Good. You need to feel some kind of emotion at some point in your life."

I got off of my cot and punched him in the face.

He was going to wake up in the morning with a bruise on his neck, and now one on his face.

This happened just in time as Wally and Oliver walked in.

Thomas at first just stared at me in shock with his hand over the place at his jaw where I had punched him.

Then he whistled, and laughed.

"I can't believe I missed it."

I stared at him apathetically.

"You're not jealous of what I'm doing... you're jealous because of who I'm doing it with."

_DOING IT?_

"Define _doing it."_

He raised his eyebrows and said with his white teeth gleaming, "You know."

I punched him again and walked out of the tent. That night I hiked all the way to the digging site and slept in one of the holes.

Then in the morning before anyone woke up, I walked back towards the tent. On the way, I saw Old Lady Walker setting up breakfast as usual. But this time, I walked over to her and helped her carry the tray of tortillas from the house to the rusted table outside.

She smiled at me.

I imagine it was a very rare experience to have been smiled at by Mrs. Walker, even by her husband.

"Yer a nice boy," she said. Her dry lips peeled back to reveal a jagged row of dark, whittled teeth.

I surprised the both of us by kissing her on the cheek.

She put the pitcher of milk down on the table. Milk was a once-in-a-week treat for Greenlake delinquents. She tucked a strand of my hair behind my hair like her granddaughter had done before and walked weakly back into her house.

I missed my mother.

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**Thank you again **_**iamshunspike **_**and**_** RnDveilRn **_**aaand last but not least, _TheAmethystRiddle_, who just updated one of her stories. **

**And to ****_violingirl101_, ****you should especially enjoy the next few chapters. **

**Oh... and**

**REVIEW! I like reviews *drool*  
**

**Peace, love, and pure utter ecstatic happiness;**

**LeMoNsOuR **


	13. Katy

**HALLOO READERS**

**Some may remember a request I made in Chapter 10 for new characters. Pendanski was one of the characters requested, and then I added Oliver in just for fun. But also, ****Violingirl101**** had requested a character to be named Katy. So, Violingirl, this chapter is so dedicated to you! I hope I did your character justice. Any of my birdies left out there reading this, I hope you enjoy.**

**And TheAmethystRiddle, yeah, I'm one for creating awkward moments. Such things bring me great joy in life. Thanks for the review.  
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13

Katy

One week passed.

Nothing.

Nothing was done, but then again, nothing _could _be done.

What was supposed to happen to me? What was going to happen to Marion Sevillo? My sentence would be up in half a year. What then? Would I become a ward of the State? Would I go to an orphanage?

It was night, and everyone had finished their holes. Thomas was caught helping Oliver dig his first hole last week, so old man Walker decided on the new rule that nobody was to help anyone else with their holes.

Oliver and Wallace—I mean "Darkness" were playing some kind of made up card game with the legendary naked lady card deck. Oliver giggled the first time he saw the image, and I thought to myself it must have been the first time he's ever seen anyone remotely naked.

Cause I've seen plenty, o'courrse. Pfft.

What, you don't believe me?

Thomas was not in the tent, however, and I went into the rec room. It was a depressing sight to see. The new pool table was already scratched with "Glenn + David's mama 4ever" and "Greaser Greaser" on the wooden panel of the table.

What the hell is "greaser greaser"?

Stupid children.

Speak of the devil, Glenn spotted me and swaggered towards me pumping his fists like an idiot. "Hey wassup, Flower boy, my nigg—"

Mo, a tall, dark haired 16-year old who was still trying to grow a moustache slapped him in the back of the head.

"You stupid or something? You don't say that word around here. You not black..."

Glen frowned.

"Well you not black, either, Mo. You be one of those Arabians. Ain't no Arabians black."

Mo, otherwise known as Mohammad walked past saying, "whatever."

Glen smirked at me and shook his head. "What a dumbass," he said, making sure Mo could hear. Both were from B-Tent.

"It's not _Arabian _unless he's from Saudi Arabia," I said to Glen, who took it by surprise. "He's a Yemeni. From Yemen."

Glen made a sound like a sick horse snorting out an obstruction in its nasal cavity.

"Who you think you is, thinking you know about Arabians and Yamm people."

"Yemeni," I corrected. "My dad was a missionary. My mom told me a lot about him."

For some reason—it might have been the tone in my voice—Glen's smirk drooped and he gave me some kind of an idiotic brotherly nod before swaggering away.

"Hey," I called after him. "Have you seen Thomas anywhere?"

"Yeah," said Glen. "I seen him head towards the Warden's place with Lou. If ya ask me, there be a _sumthin-sumthin' _happening between those two."

_Go to hell._

"Yeah," was all I replied, and headed out.

The front of the Walker's house was empty. The car was gone, which meant that both of the Walkers must have gone out for groceries or something. What the hell was Thomas doing in there anyway? I mean, I was the only one who used to be allowed there alone. What right did that Rambo-vampire asshole have to strut his stuff as if that were his place?

Angrily, I opened the door without knocking.

It was then I heard a conversation I wasn't supposed to be hearing. It was between Lou and Thomas.

"You think your grandparents know 'bout us?"

I heard Lou give a sarcastic giggle.

They were in the living room.

On the couch.

"Where are your folks anyway?" Thomas asked.

"They're out to get Katy."

"Who's Katy?" Thomas's voice had suddenly perked up.

"You seem _perdy _interested in someone you don't know," Lou said playfully.

"No—that's not it." An awkward pause ensued. "I'm just curious, that's all."

"Katy's my cousin. Her momma's dead and her dad just got real sick so grandpa decided that Katy would enjoy being with me for a while. Plus I think he secretly hoped she'll make good company for grandma and wake her up from her... sleep."

At the mentioning of Linda Walker, her grandmother, her voice faltered a little bit.

"Now... where were we?" Thomas said cattily (yes, cattily) to avoid the awkward matter of Lou's grandmother,

"Not now, Tommy. I'm not in the mood anymore."

"Pleeaase," said Thomas.

Wow, what a desperate jerk-off.

"What's wrong?" asked Thomas disappointedly.

"I'm thinkin' bout Flower, is all."

This caught me by surprise.

"You're thinking about Sevillo _now?" _Thomas was annoyed.

Lou let out a hybrid of a sigh and a laugh.

"Flower has nowhere to go. He doesn't have relatives that we can find. And I can't imagine Flower in some third rate orphanage eating cabbage soup."

Thomas laughed. "Cabbage soup? Did you get that from the movie _Oliver_? You know, orphanages must have _changed_ a little since then," Thomas said sarcastically, then added, "what about his dad? Can't his dad take him?"

"Don't ya know?" she asked.

"Know what?"

"His daddy's dead."

Thomas went quiet for a moment.

"Oh, no way." Thomas mused. "How did he die?"

"I dunno. My grandpa never told me. Ain't it sad, Tommy? He has no one. He has no one but us."

Thomas exhaled and said, "Listen, Lou. You don't have to worry about him. He may look like a garden gnome but he really isn't as dumb as one. Now come on... let's enjoy what's left of our time before your folks get back."

Then she blurted it out.

"My grandpa and I were thinking of keeping Flower."

"WHAT?"

"Well... he has nowhere to go, ya know? And—don't tell him—but my grandpa kinda likes him. Not in a gay way or anything (This made Thomas laugh outright) And I don't want Flower to go. We was thinkin' of findin' a way to increase his sentence, or get him to work here or even... adopting him."

"You want to ADOPT a twelve-year-old, gender-questionable kid who talks about grammar and beetles?"

"_Fourteen_."

"What?"

"He turned fourteen in January... I can't believe this! He's in your tent. He was the first one that talked to you. He was your bait when your tent-mates went through that retarded obsession with escaping the camp..."

Thomas said nothing.

This was all too much for me. I didn't know what to think of it, and I wish I'd never gone in this stupid fucking house.

I was about to leave as quietly as possible when I heard Lou's voice again.

"Hey, Tommy..." Lou's voice hitched, as if hesitant.

"What?"

"Do you ever still want to find your brother?"

The long pause after that made it seem the air was extremely thick. Then I heard Thomas say in a dejected manner, "I don't really wanna talk about that."

I left that dark room then as quickly as I could.

God, I was hungry. But just then, I saw the old Walkers' hearse car puttering back from the distance.

I heard the front door slam and Thomas rushed out. He must have seen the car as well. He looked surprised to see me standing so close to the house. Like a deer caught in headlights.

"Oh... hey..." he said. "I was just...umm—"

"I just got here," I stated quickly. He believed it.

Thomas crossed his arms and nodded to the approaching car. "They're bringing back some cargo. Her name's Katy, Lou says." He smiled coyly and said to me, "She's a _blonde_."

"Don't try to act like a womanizer. I saw you writing that poetry, little miss," I said with so much attitude that Thomas hooted.

"You're the funniest guy I know, ya know that?" Thomas then looked at his feet.

The car arrived, and we both still stood there, I think both eagerly anticipating what was to step out of that car. It didn't even cross our attention that we could actually be punished for it.

The front car door opened and Walker wiggled out, making it look like the automobile itself was a wild animal giving birth to a smelly old man.

"That was absolutely disgusting."

"What are you kids doing here? You can't just come and go as y'all please. Go back to work."

Thomas shrugged. "It's evening. We finished digging."

Surprisingly, Walker didn't argue back. Instead, he walked to the other side of the car and helped his wife out of her seat. When she saw me, it appeared as if a small smile had formed on her face, but it could have just been gas.

The back door opened by itself and a small, spry young thing stepped out.

"Aww," I said. "Look Thomas, it's a dollie!"

She, in fact, did resemble a felt doll with slight arms and slight legs and curls upon her blonde head that were _almost _corkscrew, but not quite. Her eyes we just a large as a doll's; pale and silvery blue with lashes that reached the sky. Her head bobbled slightly out of tiredness, adding to the effect of, yes, a living marionette.

"This here darlin' is our Katy," Walker said, tottering over to the lost-looking girl and planting a kiss on her forehead. This action resulted in the girl's eyes widening to an unrecognizable extent. And her light face turned a shade of green.

I was surprised that she tolerated such an action by only turning green and looking like she was about to die. If Walker kissed my head, I would have barfed.

Thomas was the first to say hello whilst I stood, still observing.

"Hey, I'm Thomas."

Much to astonishment, her solemn face stretched and she giggled loudly.

"What's so funny?" Thomas asked stupidly. He looked around as if someone would offer him an explanation.

She giggled again.

"Katy's a shy girl, but she really is a sweetheart once she gits ta know you." With that, Walker spat into the ground and limped to his house with his wife who trailed behind like a dead tree.

"Nice to meet you, Tommy." Her voice matched her slim build.

"It's actually Thomas."

Instead of replying, her eyes absentmindedly wandered to me.

"Hello," she said quietly. To her chest she held what looked like a green notebook.

"Do you draw?"

Ignoring my question, she said, "You have nice cheeks. They're like bread," She touched my face. "Like sandwich bread."

I realized that she was very much like Lou and didn't socialize like a normal person. At all.

I sighed and said, "I like your skirt. It looks like a mushroom."

(Lou always wore pants.)

Katy giggled approvingly and then hugged me, which caught me off guard.

Thomas frowned. "I don't get it. How do you _do_ that with people?"

"I wish I knew," I said.

Just then Lou walked out. Immediately Katy screamed, then Lou screamed, followed by dancing around and hugging.

The sun was going down by this time and both Thomas and I looked at each other.

"Well, it was nice meeting you, Katy," he said, putting his hands in the pocket of his gray jumper. He nodded at me and we both began walking back to camp.

"See, Katy? That there's Flower. Ain't he pretty? And that's Tommy—"

"THOMAS!" He shouted back, but Lou just smiled and said cheerfully. "Tommy, he writes poetry, too."

Katy's large eyes widened at that but she said nothing.

Thomas and I were silent as we headed to the tent.

When we got back, the twins were still playing cards, but were less enthusiastic as when I left them.

"Please... save us," said Oliver.

"We've been playing cards since the beginning of time," said Darkness.

"_I_ know!" said a female voice behind us. "Oh my gosh, guys, I got the coolest game!"

It was Lou.

"We ran after you, but you were stuck in your own thoughts or something cause you didn't turn back to look at us once," she said.

"This is Katy. And we're gonna play Truth or D_are_," Lou announced with a satisfied nod of her head.

Oliver and Darkness's mouths dropped open at the sight of the 99 pound newcomer with the book still in her hand.

"She's like a vixen made from spun gold!" said Oliver to me.

Darkness didn't say anything. He just stared. What else was new?

"Aww, Lou. That's such bogue game," Thomas said, letting himself fall onto his cot.

"Did you just say _bogue_?" Lou snorted loudly to herself and then suddenly stopped. .

"Trying to catch up with the modern teenage vocabulary list?" I asked, taking off my shoes. "Eh, Fonzie?"

Thomas rolled away from us and hid his face. "Man, shut up. That was such a bogue joke."

We all laughed. Thomas's ears turned a bright shade of red.

Lou took out a small Coca-Cola bottle that she brought with her and laid it upon the ground, explain how we were to sit around in a circle and spin the bottle.

"Whichever two people that the ends of the bottle point to are the darer and _daree_."

"Oh! Oh! I want to spin the bottle!" I declared.

For the first three rounds, Thomas stayed on his cot, completely unmoving with his arms crossed. However, when Lou dared Katy to kiss Oliver on the cheek (it was as if she knew exactly who to dare and what to dare them to do), Thomas seemed to gain interest and silently walked to the circle where we sat and took his place next to Lou.

"Hey cool cat," she said to him teasingly. "Flower power, man"

"That term is soo last decade," Oliver said, rolling his eyes. This caused an uproar which, when Thomas discovered he was being made fun of, made him blush blood red.

Darkness spun the bottle afterwards, and it landed on Katy.

"_Groovy_," he said, resulting in a glare from Thomas.

"Rad! All the way! Funkadelic!" Each of us shouted one by one, making fun of Thomas's attempt earlier at using the word "bogue".

Finally, Darkness asked Katy,

"Katy, what is your secret power?"

Smiling, Katy said without hesitation, "I can tell the future."

Lou nodded. "It's true. One time, when I stayed over at her house, she said 'I bet we'll have omelette for breakfast'. And the next day," Lou said in a creepy tone, "WE HADE OMELETTE FOR BREAKFAST!"

Her uproar caused everyone to fly backwards.

Then Thomas randomly said, "Jive Turkey, man."

There was an awkward silence as people tried to hold in their mirth, but it didn't last long. Lou was in such hysterics that she was holding her stomach. But this time Thomas didn't blush. He just smiled, then kissed Lou on the cheek, which then caused another deafening silence.

Lou stared at Thomas in a '_why-did-you-just-do-that?_' expression, then looked at the rest of us for our response to Thomas's sudden outburst of affection.

I didn't even know what to say, and I saw them doing worse before.

"Hold it in your pants, Tommy," Katy said in such an innocent manner that it caused everyone to crack up again. Lou and Thomas smiled sheepishly.

Thomas spun the bottle, and it landed on me.

"Truth or dare, Flower?"

"Truth," I said.

"Tell us about your dad."

I didn't know at that time how long my brain stopped functioning, or how long I just stared at Thomas before I returned to my senses and asked, "What?"

"Tell us about—"

"Thomas, you jerk." Lou said lowly, but Thomas didn't back down.

Oliver, Katy, and Darkness looked confused, but Thomas was staring at me intently, and Lou was gazing guiltily away.

"He died," I said.

"How?" Oliver asked.

"He was doing ministry work in Africa..." I scratched my head apprehensively. I really didn't want to continue, but everyone was staring so intensely.

"You don't have to tell us if ya don't want to, Flower." Lou said. "You can pick dare instead."

Thomas's eyes were still unwavering. He wanted an answer.

"In Rwanda there's been this ongoing clash between two different ethnic groups, and my dad was caught in a skirmish between a group of Hutu and Tutsi people. He was killed 'cause he tried to stop this Tutsi guy from shooting this Hutu girl. I was just a kid at the time and we were waiting for him at the airport, but he never came. We didn't even know he was dead until four days later."

Everyone was looking down by then, even Thomas. But Katy was just... staring at me.

"My daddy says all things turn out in the end, even after death," she said.

I imagined her father told her that countless times to explain her mother's death and her father's sickness.

I didn't believe him.

"It's getting late," Lou muttered.

Thomas leaned towards her but Lou coldly stood up and dusted herself off.

"G'night Oliver. G'night Wally."

Kate got up as well.

"See you later, alligator," she said to me.

When the two girls left, Thomas clenched his jaw and unclenched it again. He seemed to have difficulty knowing what to say.

"Hey, Sevillo—"

"Whatever," I said, and climbed into my cot without bothering to change.

"I didn't actually _do _it with her, you know. I was just kidding," he said from behind my turned back, and then concluded,

"We're only fifteen years old, for Christ's sake."

He turned off the lantern.

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**Love, peace, and pure ecstatic happiness,**

**LeMoNsOuR**


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